


the first year of your life

by singingtomysoul



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: 'Dennis is a dad' feels, 12x10 reaction fic, Gen, POV Second Person, kidfic sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-13
Updated: 2017-03-13
Packaged: 2018-10-04 02:28:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10265558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singingtomysoul/pseuds/singingtomysoul
Summary: you’re 38 and it’s the worst year of your life. you know it’s going to be when you start off on a plane binge drinking and all you feel is numb. you get off at the earliest layover to avoid a clingy hookup, and wind up eating chicken fingers at an applebee’s because there’s nothing else to do for miles. you fuck a waitress in the bathroom (she’s a 6 at best) and leave her one of the tacky business cards you printed up years ago just to make your story hold. you’d forgot there’s a working number on there, but no one ever calls it.





	

you’re 38 and it’s the worst year of your life. you know it’s going to be when you start off on a plane binge drinking and all you feel is numb. you get off at the earliest layover to avoid a clingy hookup, and wind up eating chicken fingers at an applebee’s because there’s nothing else to do for miles. you fuck a waitress in the bathroom (she’s a 6 at best) and leave her one of the tacky business cards you printed up years ago just to make your story hold. you’d forgot there’s a working number on there, but no one ever calls it.

you’re 38 and one night to avoid your roommates you sleep on a pier wrapped in a blanket. your car is half-drowned in the lake and your dad needs to tow it out for you because your money’s helping to pay for your ex-wife to fuck with her cheekbones again. one night you tear up a collection you spent decades putting together, every conquest you ever made. every bit of proof you were attractive and clever and better than the rest. you have a sobbing breakdown on national tv, and now everyone else will know it’s not true too. a week later you finally swallow two of those pills the doctor gave you just to make the screaming inside you quiet down.

you’re 39 and you feel like your life is on repeat. half your days are like traveling back in time to a place and a person you aren’t anymore. you try to live like most people do, in a house with a commute with the best friend you’d lived with for years, but this is different somehow. he can’t make a tv work and you can’t small-talk with the neighbors in the morning. a month later you’re back in your sister’s apartment, sleeping four people to a bed, wondering how you got here. your head is quiet enough to finally remember that letter you’ve got hidden under the pile of bills on your desk. you write her back and ask to see a picture. later that year you almost die, and you realize you’ve never met him, not once, and it makes something in you drown all over again. (your best friend almost comes out of the closet. he doesn’t. nothing around you ever changes.)

you’re 40 and you thought you’d be angrier; instead you’re just tired. your ex-wife dies, and you didn’t kill her, but in a way you kind of did. for the first time in years there’s a little money in your wallet, and you send it a time zone away. you watch your best friend come out, because it’s time. you watch the people around you nearly get their lives together, and then they don’t. you think about him coming to visit you someday, in this place you’ve made your home for twenty years; you think about showing off something to be proud of, something you’ve made your own. it’s not just your own, though, it belongs to four other people, and maybe they love you more than you knew. but it’s not enough, it never has been. you love them too, but they’ve never had your pride.

then one day, there she is. you didn’t ask her to come to see you, you didn’t ask to meet him or get to hold him, but she came. and she’s simple and unassuming and more a 5 than a 6 now, and he’s looking at you like he knows who you are, but that’s impossible. you have never been short of stories to tell about yourself, of lies to get you out of any situation, but your head and your chest are too full and it’s worn you down. your best friend remakes the apartment you once shared right down to the stains on the couch, and two years ago you’d want it all back, but things are different now. you said once a year ago that you were tired of yelling, and you haven’t stopped being tired since. you think that maybe if you stay you’ll keep yelling forever.

she says ‘if you don’t want us, we’ll go.’ you take your son in your arms and for the first time in maybe your whole life, you can only hear your own heartbeat, and it’s saying 'don’t’. he shifts in your arms, and you right him again, and you think of being 38, and a business card you left behind, and about how the world fell apart so this thing that you made can be alive and call you 'dada’.

you’re 40 and you practically run out the door of the bar, you barely say goodbye because then you might be convinced to change your mind. you leave your car and half your things to catch them before their van pulls out from the hotel. you give your son a blue stuffed elephant, and he looks up at you with wide round eyes, and maybe someday you’ll fail him but you’ll never regret trying not to.

you’re 40, and it’s the first year of your life.


End file.
